BAE Systems pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of conspiring to defraud the federal government, among other things, the U.S. Justice Department said.

U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates sentenced BAE Systems to pay a $400 million criminal fine, one of the largest criminal fines in the history of the Justice Department's effort to fight overseas corruption in international business and enforce U.S. export control laws, the department said Monday in a release.More...

A New York prosecutor's office says it has found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of three ACORN employees caught on video advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.

The Brooklyn district attorney's office said Monday that its five-month inquiry is over and that no criminal activity was found. The videos were made by conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, who used a hidden camera on visits to offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that investigators may resume questioning a suspect who has invoked his Miranda right to remain silent and have a lawyer present if at least 14 days have passed. The 7-2 decision scales back a 1981 case safeguarding rights established in the landmark 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling.

Wednesday's case involved a Maryland man accused of sexually abusing his son. Michael Shatzer was in prison on a different offense in 2003 when a police detective tried to question him about the sexual abuse allegations. Shatzer invoked his right to have a lawyer present during the interrogation, and the detective ended the questioning.

American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and "uncompromising Western secularism" that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights, according to a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The council's 32-member task force, which included former government officials and scholars representing all major faiths, delivered its report to the White House on Tuesday. The report warns of a serious "capabilities gap" and recommends that President Obama make religion "an integral part of our foreign policy."

A U.S. judge in Washington Tuesday refused to dismiss a whistle-blower suit against the Japanese manufacturer of bulletproof vest material. The suit claims manufacturer Toyobo Ltd. and U.S. company Second Chance Body Armor Inc. conspired to sell defective body armor to law enforcement.

Supplied by Toyobo with a bulletproof material called "Zylon," "Second Chance sold over 66,000 vests between 1998 and 2004 to law enforcement agencies throughout the United States, including over 40,000 to the United States government.

A former Goldman Sachs Group programer was indicted on charges he stole computer code for the investment bank's high-frequency trading platform, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

The former programer, Sergey Aleynikov, 40, was arrested and charged in July. The three-count indictment alleges that Aleynikov, who worked at Goldman from May 2007 to June 2009, illegally transferred and downloaded "hundreds of thousands of lines of source code for Goldman's high-frequency trading system" on his last day at the firm.

Religious right leaders are making a concerted push to gain thousands of new signatures for their "Manhattan Declaration," a manifesto released late last year by about 150 conservative Christian leaders.

The document, signed by such religious-right heavy-hitters as Focus on the Family eminence James Dobson and Prison Fellowship Ministries leader Chuck Colson, compares pro-choice advocates to eugenicists (and implicitly to Nazis) and equates same-sex marriage with polygamy and a gateway to legalized incest.